'Miracle' survivor found in Philippines typhoon debris

A Philippines typhoon "miracle survivor" has been rescued after being trapped for two days under rocks and debris in flash floods that swept away his entire family and their farming hamlet.

Slathered in mud and teary-eyed, Carlos Agang recounted how a small community of banana and coconut farmers was obliterated as Typhoon Bopha unleashed a wall of water after making landfall on southern Mindanao island on Tuesday.

"It's a miracle that I survived, but I might as well be dead," Mr Agang told reporters as aid workers carried him off on a stretcher with a broken leg to be airlifted to hospital.

Death toll soars

Rescuers have recovered the bodies of 475 people, with hundreds still missing, and 179,000 people left homeless by the strongest typhoon to reach the Philippines this year.

Officials were still depositing unidentified corpses at a government yard in the centre of New Bataan, near a gymnasium packed with scores of homeless typhoon victims lying on mats on the wet, muddy floor.

Most houses and buildings in the town were flattened by boulders and logs that rolled down the mountainside, and the ground was carpeted with sludge.

Shell-shocked survivors scrabbled through the rubble to find anything that could be recovered, as relatives searched for missing family members among the newly arrived body bags delivered by soldiers.

Francisco Macalipay, an army soldier who commanded the truck delivering the bodies, said rescuers were struggling to reach villages amid the destroyed roads and wrecked bridges.